It’s unclear how closely Wesley and Sini Mathews followed professional advice about 3-year-old Sherin, who suffered from malnutrition when she was adopted from India last year, police said.

Sherin Mathews had multiple special needs that her parents sought treatment for before her death, Richardson police confirmed to The Dallas Morning News on Friday.

Sherin Mathews(Richardson Police Department)

But it’s unclear how closely Wesley and Sini Mathews followed the advice of doctors and counselors, and whether middle-of-the-night feedings were prescribed for 3-year-old Sherin, who suffered from malnutrition when she was adopted from India last year, police said.

Wesley Mathews, who was arrested Monday on a charge of injury to a child, told police he had been trying to get Sherin to drink milk and she wouldn’t listen. Sherin choked on milk at 3 a.m. in the family’s garage on Oct. 7 after Mathews “physically assisted” her in drinking, he said. Wesley Mathews, 37, told police he then removed the body, which was discovered by search dogs two weeks later, on Sunday.

Autopsy results are pending.

An official from the orphanage in India where Sherin lived before she was adopted by the Mathews family in June 2016 said Sherin had no special needs.

The girl — then named Saraswati, after the Hindu goddess of wisdom — was a happy, cheerful child who made everyone smile at the Mother Teresa Orphanage and Children’s Home in the city of Nalanda in eastern India’s Bihar state. She lived there since infancy, after being found in bushes.

“We loved her laughter,” said Babitha Kumari, who managed the orphanage. “She was a smart child.”

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Kumari said Sherin was eating solid food and drinking milk from a cup when she left the orphanage, which has since been shut down. Kumari blamed the closure on missing paperwork.

But Richardson police Sgt. Kevin Perlich said Friday that Sherin did have special needs and police are looking into “how closely [the parents] were following” the instructions for her care. She was about 22 pounds and 3 feet tall at the time of her death, making her smaller than a typical child her age.

“She was malnourished when she came over here,” Perlich said. “She had developmental issues. She was not your typical 2- or 3-year-old.”

Perlich said that Sherin had trouble communicating and had a deformity in one eye, which was smaller than the other.

The Press Trust of India reported Friday that official reports following Sherin's adoption indicated that she was adjusting well but that feeding her was becoming a problem. A social worker visiting the home suggested several strategies, the news agency reported.

‘Not … what you would expect from a mother’

Wesley Mathews has told police that his wife, a registered nurse, was sleeping as Sherin choked. He watched as his daughter's breathing slowed and her pulse stopped.

He had previously told police that Sherin went missing after he put her outside as punishment for not drinking her milk.

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Wesley Mathews, who works in information technology, is being held on $1 million bail. He faces up to life in prison. His attorney has not returned phone calls.

Sini Mathews has not been charged with a crime. Richardson police would like to interview her.

Sini Mathews leaves a court appearance Monday where she learned that her biological child, a 4-year-old girl, will remain in foster care for another three weeks while Wesley Mathews looks for a civil attorney.(KXAS-TV (NBC5))

Her attorney, Mitchell Nolte, could not be reached for comment Friday. But he has said she was not involved in Sherin's death and that she has cooperated with police but will not be speaking with them again at this time.

But Perlich said Friday that Sini Mathews' interaction with officers has been limited. Officers spoke with her when Sherin went missing and she allowed them in her home the following day. After a body was found, she talked to police about clothing and provided dental records that were used to identify Sherin.

"The level of cooperation was not commensurate with what you would expect from a mother," Perlich said. "There is a big gap between Day One and where we were at Day 14 or 15."

People gather near where Sherin Mathews was found Sunday morning in Richardson.(Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

Changes to adoptions from India

Officers this week spoke with Indian officials about Sherin’s adoption process, Perlich said. They confirmed that both India and the United States approved the adoption and Sherin moved here with the proper visa.

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But India’s minister for external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, said in a series of tweets Friday that she is asking for an investigation into Sherin’s adoption. Swaraj said in light of Sherin’s death, passports for adopted children will now be issued only with clearance by the Ministry of Child Development.

Adoption is relatively rare in India, even though hundreds of thousands of children are at risk or living in government-run or mandated centers.

Between April 2016 and March, 3,210 children were adopted within India and just 578 Indian children were adopted outside the country.

Kumari said that the Mathews family raised no red flags at the orphanage when they adopted their daughter. After their first visit to see the girl, they called regularly from the United States.

“They wanted to hear her voice over the phone. They seemed to love her. The follow-up reports from America were also good.”

India requires quarterly post-placement reports in the first year a child is adopted and then two reports a year for the second year.

“I will always want to know what happened to this child. What was the real reason she passed away?” Kumari said.

“If we had known this would happen to her, we would never have sent her.”

Jennifer Emily. Jennifer is an award-winning reporter at The Dallas Morning News.
She has covered the justice system from the street to the courtroom to the execution chamber. She has also written about child criminals, growing up in prison, wrongful convictions, police shootings and the flaws of eyewitness testimony.
She earned a degree in journalism with a concentration in sociology from Indiana University.